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I wish I had the numbers in front of me. I wish I could tell you how many bilingual books for kids have been published in the past and how that number compares to today.  If we’re going to speak to my experience as a children’s librarian over the past decade, all I can say with any certainty is that while I don’t know if the number of bilingual books has increased, I do feel as if I’m seeing a wider range of languages.  That is a wholly unscientific speculation, of course.  In any case, enjoy this smattering of some truly lovely bilingual books out in 2016.

Note: Some of the titles on this list are not strictly bilingual. They may instead incorporate more than one language into their text.  I have included these because they encourage a love of multiple languages and do not slot neatly under any kind of definition (and are consequently forgotten).  I’ll note these titles as they appear.

 2016 Bilingual Books for Kids

SPANISH

Ada’s Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay by Susan Hood, ill. Sally Wern Comport

A friend pointed out to me earlier in the year that it was somewhat remarkable that a nonfiction picture book was coming out in both English and Spanish versions.  Never mind that it’s beautiful to look at with great writing and a unique story.  Or that it’s one of the rare picture books out there where you can honestly get it from a child’s point of view.  I like to think that this book may be a sign of things to come.  Or maybe I just hope it.

Animal Talk: Mexican Folk Art Animal Sounds in English and Spanish by Cynthia Weill, ill. Rubi Fuentes and Efraiin Broa

This isn’t Weill’s first time around the block.  It is, however, strange that I can’t conjure up more titles that do precisely this: show animals sounds in another language.  It sort of sounds like a no brainer when you hear about it, doesn’t it?  Kudos for the idea and the gorgeous follow through.

Little Chickies / Los Pollitos by Susie Jaramillo

I think this is just one of the great book publications of the year.  In fact, I included this on my earlier board book list.  Then, one of my commenters mentioned that there was also this out there:

Little Elephants / Elefantitos by Susie Jaramillo

I’ll take twenty.

La Madre Goose: Nursery Rhymes for Los Ninos by Susan Middleton Elya, ill. Jana Martinez-Neal

Yay!  Now this appeared on the nursery rhymes list already, but it’s nice to see it here on the bilingual list as well.  Granted it’s not strictly bilingual.  Spanish words are integrated into the text.  But that’s okay.  I just think it’s neat.

Olinguito, from A to Z! / Olinguito, de la A a la Z! by Lulu Delacre

And you may have seen this gorgeous title on my alphabet list too.  It’s far more than that, though.  A science book that looks at rainforests in depth, an alphabet book, a bilingual book, and a collection of the author’s poetic rhymes (in TWO languages!), it’s a bit of an achievement.

Rudas: Nino’s Horrendous Hermanitas by Yuyi Morales

They’re baaaaack!  Again, not strictly bilingual but with a consistent smattering of Spanish words, this sequel to Nino Wrestles the World picks up where the last book left off.

Somo Como Las Nubes / We Are Like the Clouds by Jorge Argueta, ill. Elisa Amado

Oh, these poems are AMAZING!  Subject matter aside, these poems make an immediate emotional connection with readers

Waiting for the Biblioburro / Esperando el Biblioburro by Monica Brown, ill. John Parra

I felt bad.  An acquaintance, not knowing if this book would appear on my list, went so far as to send me a copy. I could have saved them a stamp since this book has been on my radar for a while.  It is by NO means the first biblioburro book I’ve ever seen, but it may well be the most touching.

JAPANESE

Are You an Echo?: The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko by David Jacobson, ill. Toshikado Hajiri, translations by Sally Ito and Michiko Tsuboi

I believe that there’s a fair amount of Japanese at the end of this book or perhaps in the poems.  Hey, if it means I get to put it on a list, you can BET that I’ll be first in line to do so.

The Last Kappa of Old Japan: A Magical Journey of Two Friends by Sunny Seki

A sweet story with a modern twist, this is great!  Takes a classic folktale creature and gives it warmth and heart and wonder.

ARABIC

Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey by Margriet Ruurs, ill. Nizar Ali Badr

Bilingual Arabic books for kids are few and far between,  so the appearance of this book on our shelves is a real treat.

I would be amiss if I didn’t should out two Chinese / English bilingual titles that I thought were truly wonderful but that are well nigh impossible to find online.  Alakazam by Chao Wang, ill. Duncan Poupard (9781945295102) and CeeCee by Mao Xiao, ill. Chunmiao Li & Yanhong Zhang, translated by Helen Wang (9781945295140) are two books that deftly display how seamlessly some translated Chinese titles fit into the American picture book market.  Unfortunately, as of this posting, I’ve been unable to locate them online.  If you have any leads on the matter, be sure to let me know.  They’re really and truly great books.

Interested in the other lists of the month? Here’s the schedule so that you can keep checking back:

December 1 – Board Books

December 2 – Board Book Adaptations

December 3 – Nursery Rhymes

December 4 – Picture Book Readalouds

December 5 – Rhyming Picture Books

December 6 – Alphabet Books

December 7 – Funny Picture Books

December 8 – Calde-Nots

December 9 – Picture Book Reprints

December 10 – Math Picture Books

December 11 – Bilingual Books

December 12 – International Imports

December 13 – Books with a Message

December 14 – Fabulous Photography

December 15 – Fairy Tales / Folktales

December 16 – Oddest Books of the Year

December 17 – Older Picture Books

December 18 – Easy Books

December 19 – Early Chapter Books

December 20 – Graphic Novels

December 21 – Poetry

December 22 – Fictionalized Nonfiction

December 23 – American History

December 24 – Science & Nature Books

December 25 – Transcendent Holiday Titles

December 26 – Unique Biographies

December 27 – Nonfiction Picture Books

December 28 – Nonfiction Chapter Books

December 29 – Novel Reprints

December 30 – Novels

December 31 – Picture Books

Latest published book … EL PERRO CON SOMBRERO You wrote it because … In doing my school visits to promote my book series Scary School, I visited many dual immersion and spanish-speaking schools and saw the need for bilingual picture books that could be used to teach either English or Spanish to early learners.

Water Rolls, Water Rises: El Agua Rueda, el Agua Sube
By Pat Mora
Illustrated by Meilo So
Children’s Book Press (an imprint of Lee & Low Books)
$17.95
ISBN: 978-0892393251
Ages 4-8
On shelves now.

Sometimes I wonder what effect the televised ephemera I took in as a child has had on my memories and references. For example, when I pick up a book like Pat Mora’s beautifully written and lushly illustrated Water Rolls, Water Rises: El Agua Rueda, el Agua Sube I immediately flash back to an old Sesame Street episode I enjoyed as a kid that showed a water sapped desert landscape made vibrant once more with the appearance of rain. Taken by itself, such a ran is an event that happens every day on Earth, and as such it’s the kind of thing tailor made to inspire a poet’s heart and mind. Poetry, sad to say, is not a form of literature that I excel in as a student. I can appreciate it, even quote it when called up to do so, but my heart belongs to prose first and foremost. If I have to read poetry, it helps to read the best of the best. Only really stellar poetry can crack my shell of indifference. And when you pair that really good verse alongside art that makes you want to stand up and cheer? That’s when you have a book that won’t just win over crusty old fogies like me, but also its intended audience: kids. Because if a book like Water Rolls, Water Rises can make me stop and think about the natural world, if only for a second, imagine what it could do for an actual child’s growing brain. Better things than old Sesame Street segments, that’s for sure.

We start slowly and watch the roll of the tides and the rise of the fog. The water is blown, then slithers and snakes, and in one particularly beautiful passage glides “up roots of tulips and corn.” After that, things pick up a bit. In swells the water sloshes, in woods it swirls, and it all culminates in storms and thunder and “lightning’s white flash.” Then, just as suddenly, all is calm again. Water rests in an oasis and slumbers in marshes. The book concludes with water joyfully “skidding and slipping”, “looping and leaping” until at last we pull back and view for ourselves our blue planet, “under gold sun, under white moon.” The bilingual text in both English and Spanish is complemented by illustrator Meilo So’s mixed media illustrations and contains both an Author’s Note and key for identifying the images in the book in the back.

Now I’ll tell you right now that I don’t speak a lick of Spanish. I’ve the rudimentary single words and phrases culled from years of watching the aforementioned Sesame Street but there’s nothing substantial in my noggin. Therefore I cannot honestly tell you if the Spanish translation by Adriana Dominguez and Pat Mora matches the English text’s spare verse. Certainly I was impressed with the minimal wordplay Mora chose to use in this book. As someone prone to wordiness (I think the length of this review speaks for itself) I am always most impressed by those writers that can siphon a thought or a description down to its most essential elements. It’s hard to say what you’ll notice first when you read this book. Will it be the words or the art? Mora’s cadences (in English anyway) succeed magnificently in evoking the beauty and majesty of water in its myriad forms. Read the book enough times and you begin to get a real sense of the rise and fall of water’s actions. I also noted that Mora eschews going too deep into her subject matter. The primary concentration is on water as it relates to the landscape worldwide. She doesn’t dwell on something like water’s role in the human body or pepper the text with small sidebars pertaining to facts about water. This is poetry as it relates to liquid. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The bilingual picture book is fast becoming a necessity in the public library setting. Just the other day someone asked if we could have more Bengali/English picture books rather than just straight Bengali, because the parents liked reading both languages to their kids. Yet sadly in the past our bilingual literature has had a rough go of it. Well-intentioned efforts to give these books their own space in the children’s libraries have too often meant that they’re scuttled away in some long-forgotten corner. The patrons who need them most are often too intimidated to ask for them or don’t even know that they exist. So what’s the solution? Interfile them with the English books or all the other languages? Wouldn’t they be just as forgotten in one collection as another? There are no easy answers here and the thought that a book as a beautiful in word and image as Water Rolls could end up forgotten is painful to me.

Since this book travels around the world and touches on the lives of people in different lands and nations it is, by its very definition, multicultural. And to be honest, attaining the label of “multicultural” by simply highlighting different nations is easy work. What sets artist Meilo So’s art apart from other books of this sort is her fearless ability to upset expectations. I am thinking in particular of the image of the wild rice harvest in northern Minnesota. In this picture two children punt a boat through marshland. Their skin is brown, a fact that I am sure Ms. So did on purpose. Too often are white kids the “default” race when books that skate around the world make mention of the U.S. It’s as if the publishers forget that people of races aside from white live in America as well as the rest of the world. As such So elevates the standards for your average round-the-world book.

Every book you pick up and read has to pass through your own personal filters and prejudices before it makes a home for itself in your brain. Let us then discuss what it means to be an English-only speaking American woman looking at this book for the first time. I pick up this book and I instantly assume that the cover is sporting an image of Niagara Falls. On the back of the jacket I come to a similar conclusion that we’re viewing Old Faithful. Thus does the American see the world only in terms of those natural wonders that happen to exist within her own nation’s borders. Turns out, that waterfall on the front is Victoria Falls, found between the countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe. And that geyser? Strokkur in Iceland. With this in mind you can understand why I was grateful for the little key in the back of the book that clearly identifies and labels (in both English and Spanish) where each location in the images can be found. It was interesting too to see each credit saying that the image was “inspired by” (“inspirada por”) its real world equivalent. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about accuracy in works of illustration in picture books. Mostly I’ve been thinking about historical accuracy, but contemporary landscapes raise their own very interesting questions. If Meilo So came up with the “inspired by” label then it may well be that it was thought up to protect her against critics who might look to her view of the Qutang Gorge, say, and declare her positioning of this or that mountain peak a gross flight of fancy. Since she is illustrating both distinct landmarks (the Grand Canyon, Venice’s Grand Canal, the coast of Cabo San Lucas, etc.) alongside places that typify their regions (a fishing boat at sea in Goa, India, a well in a rural village in Kenya, etc.) it is wise to simply give the “inspired by” designation to all images rather than a few here and there so as to avoid confusion.

After soaking in the art page by page I wondered then how much control Ms. Mora had over these images. Did she designate a country and location for each stanza of her poem? The book sports an Author’s Note (but no Artist’s Note, alas) that mentions the places Ms. Mora has traveled too. Look at the list of locations and they do, indeed, appear in the book (China, Holland, Peru, Finland, etc.). So I make the assumption that she told Ms. So what country to draw, though I don’t know for sure.

As a mother of two small children, both under the age of 4, my interest in early brain development has been piqued. And like any mother I berate myself soundly when I feel like my own personal prejudices are being inflicted on my kids. I don’t go gaga for poetry but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t read it to the kiddos as much as possible. Fortunately, books like Water Rolls, Water Rises make the job easy. Easy on the eyes and the ears, this is one clever little book that can slip onto any home library shelf without a second thought. Sublime.

On shelves now.

Source: F&G sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Water Can Be… by Laura Purdie Salas, illustrated by Violeta Dabija

• At the Same Moment Around the World by Clotilde Perrin

• All the Water in the World, by George Ella Lyon, ill. Katherine Tillotson

Lola’s Fandango
By Anna Witte
Illustrated by Micha Archer
Narrated by The Amador Family
Barefoot Books
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-84686-174-1
Ages 4-8
On shelves September 1, 2011

In my children’s room at the library the requests I receive at the reference desk from kids and their parents vary widely. On the subject of dance there’s a lot of variety. If kids want a picture book about dancing, they usually know what kind of dance they have in mind. Ballet. Tap. That sort of thing. However, since the rise of family friendly dance-related television shows like So You Think You Can Dance? kids are now discovering that there’s a whole world of dances out there that they might never have known about. It gives a gal hope, particularly when I get to see books like Lola’s Fandango. Here you have a great story with an abundance of Spanish words and great art that makes you sit up and take notice. If you’re looking for a book that’s a little bit different, this one’s got your number.

Things are rough for Lola. Her older sister Clementina has everything better. First, there’s her awesome name. Then there’s her ability to draw. On top of that is her great hair, her friends, her room, the list goes on and on. Lola would love to have at least one thing to make her special . . . and then she finds her mother’s flamenco shoes. Instantly Lola is intrigued. Her mother doesn’t dance anymore, of course, but her father used to and he’s willing to teach her. In secret then Lola learns to dance, and when her mother’s birthday arrives, Lola may have the perfect gift. But will she have the guts to perform in front of a crowd? The book comes with an audio CD of the text.

When you write a picture book it tends to be good to have more than one idea floating about your story. Which is to say, if you’re writing a tale like this one and you want to make it about a little girl who learns a new dance, I would highly recommend doing what author Anna Witte does here. Which is to say, add in the jealous younger sister element. Because Lola is envious of her older sister’s life and accomplishments (typical stuff like wanting to draw as well, have as nice a head of hair, have friends over, etc.) she has the impetus to want to distinguish herself in some way. If the book were merely a story about a girl who wants to learn to dance and chooses this kind, it wouldn’t really carry the same oomph, so to speak.

One element of the book that was interesting to me was Lola’s desire for a polka dot dress to dance in. It’s important to me that Lola accept that she will dance for her mother, stage fright fears or no and then receive the polka dot dress as a present. If the dress came too soon then the point of the book might be taken as “you can do anything your heart desires . . . as long as you sport the right clothes”. Some kids will take away that message anyway, but at least it can be easily corrected by simply pointing out to them that Lola agrees to dance before finding out that there’s a present in the offering.

I was rather taken with Witte’s writing in this book too. As a German raised in Spain who has lived in the States for at least eighteen years, she has a good ear for the picture book format. The book reads slightly longer than the younger fare out there. Think Patricia Polacco rather than

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Littleton Colorado (Free-Press-Release.com) December 5, 2010
M E D I A R E L E A S E

CONTACT: Nicole Weaver
Children’s Author
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 303 263-6346

For Immediate Release

Marie and her Friend the Sea Turtle coasts through cyberspace

Title: Marie and her friend the Sea Turtle/ María y su amiga la Tortuga del mar/Marie et son amie la Tortue de mer
Written by: Nicole Weaver
Illustrated by: Ruben Chavez
Ages: 8-12
Publisher: Outskirts press

Soft cover: ISBN: 9781432723774

Published: March 2009

Synopsis:
This story is about the love that developed between a little girl named Marie and a stranded sea turtle. The story tells the struggles Marie had as she helped the sea turtle back out to sea.

Esta historia es sobre el amor que se desarrolló entre una niña llamaba María y una tortuga que vino a tierra para poner sus huevos. La historia cuenta las dificultades que tenía María para regresar la tortuga de nuevo al océano.

Cette histoire est au sujet de l'amour qui s'est développé entre une petite fille qui s'appelait Marie et une tortue de mer qui est venue sur le sable pour pondre ses œufs. L'histoire raconte les difficultés que Marie a rencontrées pour remettre la tortue dans l'océan.

When Horatio has difficulty reading, his parents meet with the teacher to discover why. Horatio hears the words Dyslexia and Special Ed. “No way! Kids will think I’m dumb.” But go he does, and with amazing results.

Now from Guardian Angel Publishing!

I'm happy to announce that my children's picture book, Humberto the Bookworm Hamster, has been nominated for an EPIC Award.

EPIC stands for the "Electronically Published Internet Coalition."

The winner of EPIC’s 2011 Children's Non-Fiction/Fiction Category will be announced at the annual conference, held in historical Williamsburg, Virginia, March 10-13, 2011.

You can find more details at http://www.epicon-conference.com.

Don't Squeal Unless It's a Big Deal
By: Jeanie Franz Ransom
Illustrated by: Jackie Urbanovic
Magination Press, 2008
Ages 3 to 8

This is a cute and enchanting book with an important message for kids. Most kids don't think much about tattling. They seem to always be tattling about someone. But is it really that harmful?

The author shows the reader in a humour way that tattling is really not necessary. As parents and teachers know first hand, kids can, and do, tattle about their friends, peers, and even siblings so that they look superior to the other kids.

Other times, kids tattle to get back at another kid. For instance, if someone tattles about one kid, that kid will tattle on that kid, and the chain could continue for a long time if it isn't stopped by some adult. Tattling can cause a lot of bad feelings between kids. It can also cause low self-esteem in some kids and really hurt how they view themselves.

So, parents and teachers must take steps to eliminate, or at least alleviate, tattling as much as possible. The book will help kids learn when telling someone something is appropriate and when it is merely squealing. It is important for kids to know the difference between squealing and telling the truth about something.

In addition, at the end of the book, there is a note for parents and teachers about how to deal with kids who are tattlers. The illustrations are very cute and the message is presented in a
humourous fashion, one that will engage the young reader.

Rating: 4 Roses

Reviewed by Irene S. Roth.

Irene Roth writes fiction and nonfiction for teens and tweens. Irene also writes academically and holds a Masters Degree in Philosophy. In addition, she writes reviews for Blogcritics Magazine, Booksneeze, Tynsdale Publishers, The Muse, and is review editor for Humane